In 2009, the US Department of
Education unveiled Race to the
Top, a competition-based initiative
that leveraged funding that
Congress had appropriated as part of the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA). The goal of Race to the Top was to
identify and invest in states that not only had
outstanding ideas for improving educational
outcomes but were also in a strong position
to implement those ideas. The competition
required each applicant to submit a comprehensive
statewide plan for education reform.
Underlying the initiative was a simple theory:
By empowering states to lead the way,
the federal government would elicit broadly
applicable lessons on how to scale up effective
policies and practices. As a result, more
public schools would be able to provide an
education that would prepare students for
college and career success.

Race to the Top offers lessons in high-impact
grantmaking that are applicable not
only in education but also in other fields.
The Department of Education runs about
150 competitions every year. But among
those programs, Race to the Top stands
out. It had more than $4 billion to allocate
to competition winners, and it attracted the
participation of nearly every state in the
union. It arguably drove more change in education
at the state, district, and school levels
than any federal competition had previously
been able to achieve. Partly in response to
the initiative, 43 states have adopted
more
rigorous standards and replaced weak, fill-in-the-bubble tests with assessment tools
that measure critical thinking, writing,
and problem solving; 38 states have implemented
teacher effectiveness policies;
35 states have strengthened laws that govern
charter schools. In addition, new curriculum
materials funded through Race to the Top
and released in 2014 are already in use in
20 percent of classrooms nationwide.

Working with US Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan, I led Race to the Top from its
inception through 2010. At that point, we had
awarded all of the grant money that was available
under the program. I then served as chief
of staff to the secretary through mid-2013,
and during that period I remained involved
in the program’s implementation. Today, six
years after the launch of the initiative, we can
start to place its achievements—and, in some
cases, its missteps—in perspective.

Here are eight design principles, all
drawn from our experience with Race to
the Top, that are likely to apply to other
high-impact policy initiatives.

Create a Real Competition

At the outset, we did not know whether the
Race to the Top initiative would be compelling
to state officials. The competition took
place during a time of profound budgetary
challenge for state governments, so the
large pot of funding that we had to offer
was a significant inducement for states to
compete. But the appropriation for ARRA
included nearly $100 billion for another program
that benefited the education sector, the
State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF). That
sum dwarfed the allocation for Race to the
Top. What’s more, every state automatically
received SFSF funding on a pro-rata basis,
whereas our program required states to write
and submit detailed applications. When we
began designing Race to the Top, we hoped
that at least a dozen states would submit applications
and expected that as many as 25
states would ultimately do so.

In the end, 46 states as well as the
District
of Columbia applied for Race to
the Top support. A big factor in driving that
high participation rate, I believe, was our
decision to leverage the spirit of competition.
We maximized the competitive nature
of the program in three ways.

First, we decided that winners would
have to clear a very high bar, that they would
be few in number, and that
they would receive
large
grants. (In most cases, the
grants were for hundreds
of millions of dollars.) In a
more typical federal competition
program, a large
number
of states would
each win a share of the
available
funding. The government,
in other words,
would spread that money
around in a politically
astute
way. But because
our goal was to enable
meaningful educational
improvement, we adopted
an approach that channeled
substantial funding to the
worthiest applicants.

Second, we kept politics out of the
selection
process. The secretary received
numerous calls and letters from politicians
who requested some form of special consideration
for their states. In each case, the
message from the secretary’s office was the
same: “We’ll see what the expert reviewers
say. The best plans will win.” In keeping
with that commitment, we set up a peer-review
process that relied on a panel of
independent education experts. After the
panel had scored each state’s application,
we arranged
all of the submitted plans by
score in a state-blind way. We then funded
the highest-scoring states.

Third, we placed governors at the center
of the application process. In doing so, we
empowered a group of stakeholders who have
a highly competitive spirit and invited them
to use their political capital to drive change.
We drew governors to the competition by offering
them a well-funded vehicle for altering
the life trajectories of children in their states.

Some commentators criticized Race to
the Top for promoting competition in a sector
that, in their view, should be collaborative.
But that is a false dichotomy. Collaboration
is critical to designing strong solutions
and implementing them well, and we provided
incentives for collaboration in several
ways. But we also capitalized on the power
of competition to spark innovation and to
spur applicants
to stretch for goals that seem
just out of reach.

Pursue Clear Goals (in a Flexible Way)

A central challenge in designing Race to
the Top was to provide incentives for states
to pursue a comprehensive reform plan
while allowing them flexibility in how they
approached
that goal.

The competition required applicants to
address four key areas: standards and assessments,
teachers and leaders, data, and turning
around low-performing schools. Previous
reform efforts had often focused on a single
“silver bullet” solution—only to fail when
problems in related areas of the education system
proved to be overwhelming. Race to the Top, by contrast, pushed each state to develop
a coherent systemwide strategy for moving
beyond the status quo. We also asked states
to specify how their plan would target three
groups that are especially in need of support:
students from low-income families, students
who needed to learn English as a second language,
and students with disabilities.

Even as we were clear about the outcomes
that Race to the Top sought to promote,
we also encouraged states to devise
plans that drew on their particular strengths
and dealt with their particular challenges. In
our scoring, for example, we aimed to provide
enough clarity to ensure that applicants
and reviewers would have a shared understanding
of competition criteria. But we also encouraged reviewers to value, instead of
penalizing, efforts by states to tailor their
plans and timelines to match their particular
capabilities and needs.

Our commitment to being systemic in
scope and clear about expectations, yet also
respectful of differences between states, was
a key strength of the initiative. But it exposed
points of vulnerability as well. In our push to
be comprehensive, for instance, we ended up
including more elements in the competition
than most state agencies were able to address
well. Although the outline of the competition
was easy to explain, its final specifications
were far from simple: States had to address
19 criteria, many of which included subcriteria.
High-stakes policymaking is rife with
pressures that bloat regulations. In hindsight,
we know that we could have done a better job
of formulating leaner, more focused rules.

On the whole, though, our approach led
to positive results. In applying for Race to the
Top, participating states developed a statewide
blueprint for improving education—something that many of them had previously
lacked. For many stakeholders, moreover,
the process of participating in the creation
of their state’s reform plan deepened their
commitment to that plan. In fact, even many
states that did not win the competition proceeded
with the reform efforts that they had
laid out in their application.

Drive Alignment Throughout the System

The overall goal of the competition was to
promote approaches to education reform
that would be coherent, systemic, and statewide.
Pursuing that goal required officials at
the state level to play a lead role in creating
and implementing their state’s education
agenda. And it required educators at the school and district levels to participate in
that process, to support their state’s agenda,
and then to implement that agenda faithfully.

In applying for Race to the Top, states developed a statewide blueprint for improving education—something that many of them had previously lacked

States control many of the main levers
in education: They set educational content
standards, commission standardized assessments,
establish accountability systems, oversee
teacher licensing, and provide substantial
funding to schools. Historically, however,
most state education agencies have focused
less on playing a leadership role than on passing
funds through to districts and monitoring
regulatory compliance. Districts typically
function as independent actors that report
to their school board and interact very little
with their state agency. With Race to the Top,
we aimed to encourage states and districts
to achieve alignment around a shared set of
education policies and goals.

To meet that challenge, we required each
participating district to execute a binding
memorandum of understanding (MOU)
with its state. This MOU codified the commitments
that the district and the state
made to each other. Reviewers judged each district’s depth of commitment by the specific
terms and conditions in its MOU and
by the number of signatories on that document.
(Ideally, the superintendent, the
school board president, and the leader of
the union or teachers’ association in each
district would all sign the MOU.)

The purpose of the MOU process was
to generate serious conversations among
state and local education officials about their
state’s Race to the Top plan. The success of
the process varied by state, but over time
these MOUs—combined, in some cases,
with states’ threats to withhold funding
from districts—led to difficult but often
productive engagement between state
education
agencies and local districts.

Encourage Broad Stakeholder Buy-In

To succeed, Race to the Top had to provide
incentives for states to develop reform
agendas
that were not only bold enough to
merit significant investment but also capable
of gaining broad acceptance. Achieving that
dual objective required the use of mechanisms
that gave voice to many stakeholders
while recognizing the central importance
of a few. Our underlying goal was to enable
each state to achieve an appropriate blend
of executive leadership, union support, and
community engagement.

Some critics claimed that Race to the Top
gave unions veto power over state plans and
that placing a premium on multi-stakeholder
collaboration watered down reform efforts.
Others argued that teachers had little or
no voice in the program. These conflicting
criticisms marked the line that we needed
to navigate in designing the competition.
To help each state bring all parties to the
reform table, we deployed four tools.

First, we forced alignment among the top
three education leaders in each participating
state—the governor, the chief state school
officer, and the president of the state board
of education—by requiring each of them to
sign their state’s Race to the Top application.
In doing so, they attested that their office
fully supported the state’s reform proposal.

Second, we requested (but did not
require)
the inclusion of signatures by three
district officials—the superintendent, the
school board president, and the leader of
the relevant teachers’ union or teachers’
association—on each district-level MOU.
This approach, among other benefits, gave
unions standing in the application process
without giving them veto power over it.

Third, we created tangible incentives for
states to gain a wide base of community
support
for their plans. Securing buy-in from
multiple stakeholders—business groups,
parents’ groups, community organizations,
and foundations, for example—earned
points for a state’s application. Having the
support of a state’s teachers’ union earned
additional points.

Fourth, as part of the judging process,
we required officials from each state that
reached the finalist stage to meet in-person
with reviewers to present their proposals and
answer reviewers’ questions. At this meeting,
a team that often included the state’s
governor—as well as union leaders, district
officials, and the state’s education chief—made its case to reviewers. We imposed this
requirement largely to verify that those in
charge of implementing their state’s plan
were knowledgeable about the plan and fully
committed to it. (This was particularly critical
in cases where states had used consultants
to help draft their application.)

Promote Change from the Start

One of the most surprising achievements of
Race to the Top was its ability to drive significant
change before the department awarded
a single dollar to applicants. States changed
laws related to education policy. They adopted
new education standards. They joined
national assessment consortia. Three design
features spurred this kind of upfront change.

First, we imposed an eligibility requirement.
A state could not enter the competition
if it had laws on the books that prohibited
linking the evaluation of teachers
and principals to the performance of their
students.
Several states changed their laws
in order to earn the right to compete.

Second, we decided to award points
for accomplishments that occurred before
a state had submitted its application. In
designing
the competition, we created
two types of criteria for states to address.
State Reform Conditions criteria applied
to actions
that a state had completed before
filing its application. Reform Plan criteria,
by contrast, pertained to steps that a state
would take if it won the competition.

The State Reform Conditions criteria
accounted
for about half of all points that
the competition would award. Our goal was to
encourage each state to review its legal infrastructure
for education and to rationalize that
structure in a way that supported its new education
agenda. Some states handled this task
well; others simply added patches to their existing
laws. To our surprise, meanwhile, many
states also changed laws to help meet criteria
related to their reform plan. To strengthen
their credibility with reviewers, for example,
some states updated their statutes regarding
teacher and principal evaluation.

Third, we divided the competition into two
phases. States that were unsuccessful in Phase
One had an opportunity to strengthen their
applications by making legal or policy changes
in advance of applying for Phase Two. In the
first phase, only 2 states made it over the high
bar that we had set. In the second phase, 10
other states cleared the bar. The latter group
of states had the benefit of learning both from
reviewers’ comments and from the proposals
of successful Phase One applicants.

Enable Transparency

From its earliest days, Race to the Top received
a high degree of scrutiny and faced pressure to
be above reproach. We decided that the best
way to handle this pressure was to allow the
public to see what we were doing.
We followed
a simple rule: If a document would be subject
to public release under the Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA), then we would make it
publicly available even before we received a
FOIA request. In that spirit, we placed every
significant document on the Department
of Education website at the earliest possible moment.
Such documents included regulations related to the competition, guidance materials
provided to reviewers, support materials
provided to applicants, answers to applicants’
questions, each state’s application, video
recordings
of each finalist state’s in-person
presentation, and reviewers’ score sheets and
comments about each application.

The task of reviewing all of this material
(and redacting personally identifiable
information from it) placed a high burden
on the department. Yet our commitment
to transparency brought several beneficial
consequences that we had not foreseen.

First, the quality of everyone’s work
product was high because all parties knew
that their work would be subject to public
scrutiny. The department’s support materials
were easy to follow; state applications
were thorough and well written; reviewers’
comments were helpful and clear.

Second, participants developed a common
vocabulary for talking about education
reform and a shared understanding of
what “high-quality” reform efforts look like.

Third, the Race to the Top website became
a marketplace for sharing ideas. At the
conclusion of Phase One, for example, participants
began poring over one another’s
applications to find out how other states
had dealt with specific problems. As a result,
ideas traveled quickly around the country.

Fourth, a “crowdsourced” approach
to handling Race to the Top information
emerged. We couldn’t keep up with the enormous
load of data that the competition generated—and we learned that we didn’t have
to. The public did it for us. State and local
watchdogs kept their leaders honest by reviewing
and publicly critiquing applications.
Education experts provided analyses of competition
data. And researchers will be mining
this trove of information for years to come.

Build a Climate of Support

Providing support to states as they developed
their application was crucial to the
success of Race to the Top. Most states
had been acculturated through previous
Department of Education interactions
to respond to departmental programs in compliance-oriented ways. The following
question, asked in various ways by officials at
applicant support sessions, exemplified the
prevailing mindset: “If I do X, will I get full
points? Or should I do Y instead?” Over and
over, we replied, “There is no ‘right answer.’
You have to do what’s best for your state and
then explain why it’s best.”

Three factors helped applicants meet
the challenge of entering the competition.

First, stakeholders across the country mobilized
to provide support to states. Experts
developed roadmaps for applicants to follow.
Foundations offered both human and financial
capital. Business leaders helped guide
strategic planning processes for many states.

Second, we designed the application process
in the form of a step-by-step guide that
anticipated the problems that states might
encounter in formulating their reform initiatives.
In particular, we organized the application
around a series of questions regarding
a state’s theory of action, its track record and
its current capacity, its goals for reform, and
its detailed plans for attaining those goals.

Third, we engaged in extensive outreach
to applicants. We hosted webinars and held
all-day in-person sessions in which we walked
state officials through each item on the
application.
We also created a rapid-response
system for answering questions that came in
from states. Cross-functional teams—teams
that included policymakers, lawyers, budget
analysts, and program officers, among
others—logged and tracked—inquiries and
worked to answer them quickly, accurately,
and in plain English.

Ensure Accountability

The investment that the department made
in supporting applicants, coupled with the
investments that states made in developing
applications, reflected a sense of urgency
that contributed to the success of Race to
the Top. Yet the competitive nature of the
program inspired some applicants to over-promise
and underdeliver. To mitigate over-commitment,
we adopted three strategies.

First, we asked applicants to set targets
that were “ambitious yet achievable.” The
mandate to combine those two qualities, we
hoped, would result in a productive tension
and lead applicants to strike the right balance.

Second, we asked applicants to submit
evidence to support their claims. For some
criteria, we required very specific forms of
evidence. In other cases, the provision of
evidence was optional.

Third, we required each state’s attorney
general to sign a statement that attested
to the accuracy of any information in his
or her state’s application that pertained to
state law. Race to the Top reviewers were in
no position to interpret state law, so it was
critical to have this check on the accuracy
of applicants’ claims.

None of these approaches was sufficient
to rein in the inclination of applicants to over-promise.
Changes to certain federal rules
would help solve this problem. Agencies
should be able to set aside adequate funding
to conduct peer-review processes, and
they should receive broad leeway in managing
those processes. That way, agencies
would have the resources that they need to
retain strong reviewers and to undertake
thorough reviews of applicants’ implementation
capacity.
In addition, agencies should
have the ability—without going through a
years-long appeals process—to withhold or
withdraw funds from grantees that fail to
implement their plans. As long as the threat
of losing funds remains weak, applicants will
have an incentive to exaggerate first and beg
for forgiveness later.

Competitions are an imperfect way to drive
change. Yet as our experience with Race to
the Top shows, they can serve as a crucible
of reform for forward-thinking leaders. A
well-designed competition can spur innovation,
create a marketplace for new ideas,
engage multiple stakeholders in a broad-based
reform effort, and create conditions
in which rapid change is possible—even in
a traditionally change-resistant field. We
will not know the full impact of Race to
the Top for several more years. Already,
though, it has provided important lessons
for policymakers.

Joanne Weiss is an independent education consultant. She was formerly director of the Race to the Top program
and also served as chief of staff to US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.